Baccano! - Volume 10 - Chapter 2.5

Interlude II The Twisted Soul Stays Cool and Calm

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary Special underground cell

Roughly a minute had passed since Ladd had laid out all the Shams.

Firo was sighing over his predicament, while Ladd had put a finger to his temple in apparent thought. Suddenly, he clapped his hands together, then turned a brilliant smile on Firo.

“Okay. Well, you take your time and think, Firo. I’ll finish these fellas off.”

“Why would you do that?”

Firo’s gaze sharpened in protest, and Ladd looked mystified as he responded.

“‘Why would I do that’? Why wouldn’t I do that? I’m a murderer, technically, and if you’re askin’ whether it’s okay for me to off these guys for no reason, well, I figure it is, ain’t it? I ask myself, and of course the answer is yes! Don’t even need to think about it! Every part of me agrees… Which makes it a yes, right? Ain’t that right?”

“It’s murder; of course it’s not okay! You couldn’t call this justifiable self-defense by any stretch. If you kill these guys here, you won’t just be doing more time. You’ll be going straight to the gallows.”

“The gallows, huh…? Say, do you suppose executioners way back when ever thought they wouldn’t get killed, since they were the ones doing the killing? Or were they always on edge wonderin’ if it’d be their number tomorrow? Which do you think it was? Huh? Which one?”

“Dunno. It doesn’t matter.”

Ladd was rambling about something irrelevant to their current situation, as usual, and Firo was at his wit’s end. He started wondering what he should do with the eyeball squirming in his right hand, but then…

“No, no, Firo, listen. It’s important, all right? This is a very pertinent problem for me now. See, I’ve got the right to slaughter these guys, no questions asked, this very minute. But if I play God and deliver a glorious death to somebody who’s out cold, what emotion is that going to plant in me?”

“I couldn’t possibly tell you.”

“Well, yeah. I’ve never just up and killed a fella who’s sleeping before. It’s like an adventure. If I end up thinkin’ I’ll never die, like I’m some kinda god, I won’t be able to make any excuses for myself.” Firo had answered indifferently, but Ladd kept yammering away with far too much excitement. With no attempt to hide his unusual level of energy, he asked, “What about it? What about you, Firo? You ever thrashed a sleeping guy to death? You ever had an overwhelmingly, outstandingly, phenomenally, exceptionally, positively, absolutely superior upper hand and thought, ‘Hey, I’m gonna kill this guy, so maybe that means I’m gonna die’?”

“Of course I—”

But he couldn’t say he hadn’t committed such a murder.

Needless to say, Firo hadn’t had the experience personally. However, he did remember it.

Among Szilard Quates’s memories, there was one from a certain ship, more than two hundred years ago.

It wasn’t something he wanted to remember, but as memories tend to do, it surfaced in his mind in response to little things whether he summoned it or not.

In the dead of night, he was standing beside a bed, extending his right hand toward the head he could see in it, and—

—he wished he could forget the sensation that followed.

The one who’d been absorbed into his right hand back then had been…

Maiza’s…kid brother.

Immediately after he’d absorbed him, he’d seen a flashback, memories of yet another person’s life.

As he recalled the memory within a memory—Szilard’s experience of Maiza’s brother’s memories rushing into him—Firo realized that he was clenching his own right hand into a white-knuckled fist.

“Oops. Dammit.”

When he remembered he was holding an eyeball, for a moment, the sheer creepiness of the idea almost made him drop it. But if he let go, it would be sucked right back into Huey’s body, lying at his feet.

“Hey, c’mon, don’t crush that thing. Hey, actually, how are you planning to take that home with you anyway? They’ve got this prison-island locked up tight. They’ve even got their eagle eyes on the lookout for stuff like single hairpins. I’m real curious how you’re gonna get that eyeball past them. Are you going to swallow it or something? I think somebody said human eyeballs are pretty tasty; want to give it a few good licks? Or are you going to chew it up until it’s a squishy mess and see what the inside tastes like?”

“Don’t be sick! Who the hell’d eat an eyeb—”

I’ve eaten a human.

The moment he tried to argue back, Firo remembered the sensation of Szilard getting sucked into his own right hand, the influx of all sorts of memories into him, and he unconsciously fell silent.

“…? What? You’ve been acting weird for a while, you know that?”

“It’s nothing.”

Firo heaved a big, dramatic sigh, then set to work distracting Ladd from the “weird” behavior he’d just pointed out.

A short while ago, Ladd had said he’d come to kill Huey.

Firo’s behavior had told him there was a way for immortals to die.

The day Firo let Ladd in on the cannibalism method, Ladd might very well say, “Okay then, I just have to starve you until you can’t take it anymore, then tie your right hand to Huey’s head!” And he wouldn’t just say it; Ladd was very likely to actually do it.

On top of that—he might declare that he was going to kill other immortals as well.

No matter what, he couldn’t let this bloodthirsty maniac learn their secret.

Remembering the faces of Ennis and Maiza and his other friends, Firo filled himself with determination.

Just then, as if he’d sensed Firo’s rising resolve…Ladd stopped dead, then murmured, kicking the guard who lay at his feet.

“So getting down to business. That immortal lying there next to you, and other immortals like you—not that I’d kill you, but, well…”

“…”

“How would a guy go about killing them?”

Firo had been expecting that question, and he answered it with a thin smile. “You think anybody’s dumb enough to tell a murderer how to kill him?”

It was a clear, simple response, and Ladd gave a single pensive nod. Then he twisted his lips into a brutal, distorted smile.

“You said it, pal! Good answer! If I was a vampire, I bet I wouldn’t tell some yahoo off the street about how a stake through my heart would kill me! Actually, the only people who’d pull a stunt like that are fellas without a care in the world, who think they’re absolutely invincible… Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah dammit, dammit, dammit to hell!”

“?!”

The change was incredibly abrupt.

Ladd suddenly flew into a rage, took a running jump, and punched the wall with all his might.

…With his unrefined, yet finely made, solid iron prosthetic.

He seemed to use the movement of his shoulders, hips, and entire body to control his pure metal hand, but the motions themselves looked like a typical blow to an opponent’s side.

There came a loud crash, and—

—cracks fissured up the wall, and he saw that the iron arm had sunk deep into the stone.

“…!”

If a human head had been there, it would probably have ended up in worse shape than a tomato after a run-in with a cow’s hoof. Forgetting for a moment that he was immortal, Firo felt a thrill of terror of that power run through him.

Punching was an incredibly simple action.

The more normal the person, the harder it was for them to imagine the pain of being shot or slashed. Since becoming immortal, Firo had been pumped full of lead and slashed in the throat, suffering lethal damage more than once, but he was able to register that pain as something to fear only because of his own personal experience.

However, what he was seeing now was far easier to understand than those had been.

If that hits you, you will die. The horrifyingly direct reality set off an alarm in his brain that was much more comprehensible than guns or bullets.

But the alarm stopped ringing almost immediately.

“Eyeeeaaaaaaaargh! Ow! Ow, ow, dammit, owwww!”

When Ladd pulled his arm out of the wall, he started to roll around on the spot, clutching his shoulder and his neck with his flesh-and-blood right hand.

After about three revolutions, he twisted around and stood up again, smiled brightly at Firo, and muttered, “That hurt like hell… Did I break my collarbone or something? Dammit, when I get out of here, I’ll have to be sure I’ve got some morphine on me before I land this punch on anything! Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Uh, wait. What are you doing?”

Firo had had no idea why Ladd did that, and now he was watching him with astonishment. The electric bulb was still swaying slightly, casting an uncanny light over the two men and all the fallen shapes. It sent a small, unsettling chill through him.

Nothing about this situation was normal.

He wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, but Ladd was whispering a perfectly easygoing apology. “Ah, sorry, sorry. Real sorry about that. I feel bad; didn’t mean to startle you! It’s just, y’know. I just remembered this super-stupendously, utterly maggoty, insanely sick-making bastard I know!”

“Did you kill that guy, too?”

“Nah, couldn’t do it. He almost killed me, actually. So now he makes me twice as sick as before.”

“…?”

There’s somebody out there who could do that?

The guy in front of him was definitely funny in the head, but his skills were the real deal. Even if Firo had a knife or a machine gun on hand, Ladd would be a real headache to kill in a straight fight.

Well, it’s a big world, Firo started to think, but—

“Yeah… That damned conductor… Next time I see him, he’s gonna pay. I’ll give him a million dollars’ worth of pain and regret and suffering and sadness and some feelings I can’t even describe! I’ll grind him into a pulp!”

“Hmm?”

The word conductor niggled at Firo slightly.

“Maybe it’s weird for a murderer to say, but this fella was a real loony all the way down to the last hair on his head… I don’t get it, but he was sayin’ something like, ‘The whole world is just some dream I’m seeing, so I’m gonna last forever’!”

“…”

Uh-oh. Firo kept quiet, but a waterfall of cold sweat was running down his back.

A conductor.

Stronger than Ladd.

“The world is a dream I’m seeing.”

“I’ll last forever.”

Those few words were all he had to go on, but Firo knew, with more certainty than he’d ever felt about anything, who it was.

It had hit him so hard that he nearly yelled in spite of himself that he’d just discovered what true conviction felt like. Everything he had—his own memories, experience, and instincts—made him positive about that conductor’s identity.

“In the end, I never even got his name, but hey, if I check up on the conductors on that train, it won’t take long to figure out who he is. Say, Firo, does any of that ring a bell for you? The train was the Flying Pussyfoot.”

“…”

“What gives? You’ve been real quiet for a while now.”

This guy…

Several bits and pieces of information flickered through Firo’s mind.

1931.

The train Isaac and Miria had come back on.

The day Czeslaw Meyer, who had become something like a little brother to Firo, had arrived.

And…the day a certain train had been erased from existence.

He was on that train…?!

The Flying Pussyfoot.

The train had been scrapped after the end of 1931, and rumors of all kinds of trouble hung around it.

Isaac and Miria had gone on and on about a monster and robbers and terrorists, but as usual, Firo had taken their story with a grain of salt.

Still, considering how the train had been treated afterward and the weirdness around its arrival, it did seem to be true that something had happened.

He’d tried asking Czes about it, but the kid had just gone white as a sheet, like he was about to cry. Firo hadn’t been able to bring himself to press the issue.

He’d decided that topic was probably best left untouched, and after a little while, he’d forgotten about the train, but…

Who’d have thought everything would connect here?

Sensing something eerie in the coincidence, Firo chose an answer and carefully began to speak. “No clue… I do know a few conductors, but I don’t bother asking about the trains they’ve been on.”

“Right. Well, yeah. Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

Ladd didn’t seem particularly disappointed. He nodded, grunting in agreement, and then the grunts shifted into humming as he jauntily picked up the rifle at his feet.

“Well, on that note, it’s about time I finished these fellas off—”

“Seriously, why?!”

“Relax. After considering all the angles, I decided I’m gonna wake them up, then kill ’em nice and slow.”

Firo shook his head in dismay. Then he marched up to Ladd and snatched the rifle away from him, using his left hand. Up until a moment ago, Firo’d been wary about even going near him, but as they were talking, he’d become convinced that Ladd really wasn’t hostile toward him.

Ladd let him take the gun without a fight, then protested with a wry smile.

“C’mon, now, stealing my piece? Y’know, this isn’t doing anything for your image. Well, I can beat people to death bare-handed. What about you, Firo? Bet you’re one of those types who doesn’t like the feeling on your hands… No, that ain’t it, is it?” Looking at Huey’s body, behind Firo, Ladd smiled cheerfully. “We’re different types of people, you and me, but we’re still on the same side. Ain’t that right?”

Firo set the rifle down on the chair, then turned to face Ladd again.

“How should I know? Dammit, talking with you feels even less like a conversation than talking with Isaac. I mean, are you sure about this? You’ve gotta think about…uh…that special someone of yours.”

“Lua.”

“Yeah, Lua. They’re holding her hostage, right? Don’t you need to make sure she’s okay?” Firo asked.

Ladd’s smile abruptly vanished. After a few seconds of silence, he began to explain his own reasoning, looking serious.

“Well, I coldcocked these guys on pure adrenaline back there, but… I’ve got my reasons for thinking Lua’s fine, even if they are a little vague.”

“Like what?”

“When I asked ’em if Lua was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, these rotten perverts said ‘For the moment.’ Remember?”

“Yeah, they did. And?”

Firo didn’t understand Ladd’s reasons at all, and he waited quietly for his answer.

“You think anybody could look at Lua and think she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?”

“…How should I know? I’ve never met her.”

“When we get out of here, I’ll introduce you.”

Well, guess he’s calmed down for now.

Relieved that he was finally able to think about what to do next, Firo brought up the main subject again.

“So what do we do about this?”

“Hmm? Well, I told you my calling is to kill the guys I can kill, so it’s better if I get that done for now, right?”

This guy is hopeless.

The slump in Firo’s shoulders was obvious, but Ladd didn’t seem to care; he was busy scanning the room.

Glancing down at the twitching Shams on the floor nearby, the murderer took a step toward them. However, Firo quietly shook his head.

“I said it before, and I’ll say it again: Don’t. These guys are prisoners and guards. They’ll never let you out.”

“Yeah, I know that. So… Not these guys.”

“?”

“Let’s say I take my time killin’ the guy whose eyeball you dug out.”

He started forward, stepping over the body of the Asian man…

…and his next step took him toward the small, unconscious figure lying in the corner.

“For now… I guess I’ll start with the one that probably isn’t in the prison records.”

“?!”

Nothing about her suggested she was anything but a young girl. Ladd had brought her into the room with him. Firo had never seen her before, but—

“Hey, waitwaitwait!”

His voice rose angrily, and he grabbed Ladd’s shoulder, stopping him.

He didn’t know who or what the girl was. She was probably the “fairy” that Isaac had mentioned hearing the other day, but either way, she was a kid. She could technically be an immortal or a homunculus, but in this situation, he couldn’t check.

“Hunh? What? You can’t kill kids?”

He wanted to scream Of course I can’t! but he kept telling himself to stay cool, and he managed to stop the shout before it escaped. Instead, he expressed his thoughts with sarcasm.

“…I dunno. If a kid came at me on a battlefield with a gun, I might. But I won’t kill one who isn’t resisting, and I’m not letting you do it, either.”

“You’re mafia, right? What if your boss ordered you to?”

“I’m not mafia. I’m Camorra,” Firo replied, keeping his voice low. “And I wouldn’t pledge my loyalty to a boss who’d give an order like that.”

“You’re soft. Soft, soft. A real cream puff,” Ladd answered with a short bark of laughter. Looking at Firo not with mockery, but actually a bit of respect, he muttered, “That’s fine. Those kids might kill you ’cause you didn’t kill them first, but you see that. You’re the type that recognizes that and is still ready to die.”

“…”

“I like guys like you. Even if you are immortal. But that bastard conductor I told you about— Get a load of what he said to me! ‘If a kid came at me with a gun, sure I’d save him. After all, I’m strong enough to dodge without breaking a sweat even if he shot at me from behind’!”

Seeing that Ladd was clenching his fists and grinding his teeth together, Firo looked away uncomfortably.

Yeah, I bet he would say that.

As Firo thought, Ladd was remembering the conductor who’d once overwhelmed him and put Lua in mortal danger. His face had been dyed red by the blood of his victims, only dimly illuminated by the predawn light, but he remembered his voice and his expression and his murderous intent—everything.

Firo saw Ladd’s mouth twist viciously, and he frowned, at his wit’s end.

Just then—Firo’s right hand felt a light shock.

Huh?

When he looked over, one of the guards had gotten up before either of them noticed, grabbed Firo’s right arm, and stolen Huey’s eyeball right out of his hand.

Wha—?

He’d had a good, solid grip on the thing, but the guard had jabbed his fingers firmly into his hand; he felt something like an electric shock, and the strength drained out of his fingers.

“Well done. For now, your job is finished.”

Even though the man’s nose was bleeding, he gave a composed smile and dropped Huey’s eye into a jar he’d taken from who-knew-where. Inside, the eye tried to climb up the glass, its blood vessels wriggling like slugs, but he clapped the lid on so tightly it couldn’t even ooze out through a crack.

“Why, you…”

Seeing that one of the men had gotten up, Ladd took a step forward, planning to deck him again— But then he abruptly stopped, glaring at something near Firo’s shoulder.

“?”

When Firo turned, wondering what was up, he realized that the little man had a rifle trained on him from below, pointed at the back of his skull.

“…Hey…,” Firo murmured with a look of protest as the little white man slowly edged backward.

Even then, the muzzle of the gun stayed fixed on Firo. The small man spoke to Ladd, though it was unclear whether he was being sarcastic or sincere. “Well, you certainly showed me. You far exceeded my expectations.”

The black man and the Asian man were beginning to get up as well, but unlike earlier, the guard was the only one speaking.

“Now then, we have a problem on our hands. How am I to convince you that we’re serious about having a hostage?”

“Start by askin’ Lua what her favorite flower is, then tell me.”

“That’s not possible.”

“…The hell does that mean?” Ladd asked in a low voice.

In response, Sham quietly shook his head. “At the moment, there’s a little trouble at the location where she’s being held. Under the circumstances, I’m not able to ask her any questions. Don’t worry; it isn’t that she’s unable to talk.”

“…”

“Let’s see… After the trouble’s blown over, I’ll be sure to ask. For now, I’ll excuse myself. At the moment, I’m not at liberty to dispose of you two.”

“Oho. You’re talking like you could get rid of nobodies like us pretty easily. That’s a real gas, sayin’ that while your nose is leaking blood, pal. Only I can’t laugh at all, can I? What’s up with that? Huh? I can’t let you get away with tellin’ funny stories that don’t make me laugh, can I?”

At Ladd’s unfair remark, Sham sighed with a wan smile.

Firo watched them tensely, unsure what to do. It would be easy to take the rifle from the little white guy. But if he did, would he trigger a repeat of the earlier situation? In that case, he decided, his first priority was watching how things developed and getting Ladd to settle down.

“The way you talk bears a slight resemblance to Graham’s style. Just what I’d expect from sworn brothers.”

“…”

At the sudden mention of his sworn kid brother’s name, Ladd ground his teeth again.

Watching him out of the corners of their eyes, the Shams began sidling toward the door. They were about as cautious as they could get, as if they were walking through a minefield, and all that nervous attention was focused on Ladd and Firo.

“Oh, as an aside, do refrain from mentioning this to Huey.”

““I can’t have him finding out yet, you see.””

“““Understand that I am always in possession of hostages.”””

““““Ladd is one thing, but you’d have trouble with that, wouldn’t you, Firo?””””

With that mean-spirited parting shot, the four Shams who’d regained consciousness gave them the exact same smile.

After the Shams had gone—all except for one guard, who was still lying in the doorway—Firo asked Ladd a question, sounding mystified.

“Hey… I know you didn’t forget that I don’t die. Why didn’t you hit him?”

“Did you wanna get shot?”

“…No.”

“Then it’s for the best, ain’t it? Not liking pain is just as important as refusing to die. The only difference is that you can steel yourself for pain to survive it, but death comes whether or not you’re braced for it.”

I see… No, hold it.

For a moment, Firo almost let himself be convinced. Then he remembered the atrocities of a few moments earlier, and he frowned. “When they took that Lua girl hostage, you slugged them like it was nothing.”

“I told you, didn’t I? I believe in Lua. Not that I don’t believe in you, Firo, but we just met, see?” Chuckling, Ladd seemed to channel his frustration with the Shams into amusement instead and asked Firo teasingly, “Besides…if they’ve got a hostage over you, too, they might start givin’ you orders: ‘Kill that guy over there.’ If that happens, and you’ve got a hostage to stress over, what are you gonna do?”

“…”

He couldn’t give an instant answer.

The idea hadn’t even crossed his mind, but it was a possibility if you thought about it.

Once you sensed a useful advantage, you could use it as often as you wanted. Turn your fallen opponents into stepping stones.

It was the natural order in underworld society, where he lived, and a common occurrence even in everyday life.

If I was in Sham’s shoes, if things went south… No, if it was me, I’d do it even before they went south.

He didn’t like using hostages, but his line of work wouldn’t let him be so fastidious. Precisely because he knew this, he was angry at his own foolishness in not thinking it through to that point.

Firo had already gouged out the eye of a man he had no real grudge against. If they’d used Ennis and the people of New York against him as hostages again, what would he have done?

Here in prison, there was no way for him to check on what was happening outside.

However, the knowledge Firo did have made him painfully certain that the being calling himself Sham really could do something to Ennis and the city’s residents.

So here in jail, I’m just his pawn and that’s it?

…Me? A camorrista?

Dammit… What am I supposed to say to Maiza and the capo masto?

Seeing Firo hesitate, Ladd swiveled his head. His gaze went to Huey, who was still lying on the floor.

“You got lucky, you late-blooming Peter Pan. The priorities on my kill list just shuffled around a bit.” Smiling cheerily, Ladd took his bloodlust and locked it away. “I guess Neverland won’t fall for a while yet.”

Ladd wasn’t pulling himself back under control. He was simply and genuinely boiling down his malice. When his breathing had calmed, he turned to Firo and shrugged.

“I tell you what, this is a lousy age we’re living in. Am I right?”

“What’s lousy about it?”

“These days, you need to reconnoiter and strategize just to slaughter a guy who’s right in front of you.”

Firo thought about what that meant for a moment, then heaved a big sigh.

This guy seriously makes no sense.

It hadn’t been long since they’d met, but Firo knew that he not only couldn’t, but mustn’t, understand what sort of man Ladd Russo was.

Ordinarily, he probably would have wanted to steer clear of him entirely, but under the circumstances, that wasn’t an option.

As a matter of fact, Isaac was about to be released at this point in time, but Firo hadn’t included Isaac in his count in the first place. This was less because he felt Isaac was useless than because Firo didn’t want to drag him into this.

I never want to hear Miria cry like that again.

But no matter what Firo thought, the murderer who was now his one and only collaborator among the inmates squeezed his iron left hand tightly, very tightly, and let his shrinking intent to kill carry his thoughts to the end of their course.

“Well, this sure got interesting. This is real interesting, ain’t it?”

“Don’t ask me.”

Ignoring Firo’s curt response, Ladd kept right on letting his excitement build.

“In that case… This has been a real shot in the arm, and I’m not gonna waste it. I’ve got to use my own hands and make things way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way more fun!”

“Do whatever you want.”

“Yeah! I will! That’s my duty by myself to me!” And I bet it’s fate, too, don’t you think? Ha-ha! …Hya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Ladd’s roar of laughter echoed underneath Alcatraz.

However, Firo was the only one who heard it, and as he listened to that maniacal laugh, once again, he remembered the position he’d been placed in.

Up until now, it had been only a vague impression. Now, though, it took on a solid shape— And inwardly, once again, he put what he’d understood into words.

This is a real mess I’ve gotten myself dragged into.